


Losing Count

by lokkatattur



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Mythology, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Math, Psychological Drama, angst-ish, mentions of prior pepperony, not really anything intense, verbosity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 05:18:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokkatattur/pseuds/lokkatattur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark was a man of science, that much should be made strictly clear.</p><p>   (Short response to the single word prompt: “Measurable.”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing Count

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to find me on tumblr where I cry about this pairing under the username lokkatattur. Enjoy~

     Tony Stark was a man of science, that much should be made strictly clear. As a man of science, Tony had always believed in the practical infallibility of data. There lay a  certain sense of security in measurable things. That which could be quantified could be manipulated, could be  _understood._

     As a child Tony had believed numbers to be the most beautiful things in the world. How wonderful, he had thought, that we live in a place so full of measure. Nature itself was, in all practicality, an homage to the power of numbers, and the world of man was ruled by them. 

     Pepper, too, had been full of numbers. She was exactly twenty-six years two hundred and thirty-eight days old upon first setting foot inside Stark tower. The left half of her face held exactly seventeen small freckles, the right baring only twelve. The level of her near-constant exasperation seemed simple to measure, to observe; her anger natural to quantify, and control. She had laughed aloud precisely forty-seven times on the day before everything had began to fall apart, and her love had alway seemed perfect in measure, until it wasn’t.

     Loki, however, seemed by his very nature immeasurable. His alabaster skin was unmarred, his origins un-offered. The mad God’s laughter often too false to be  quantified in good fairness, his smiles  _infinitely_  multifaceted. Loki’s sorrow seemed irritatingly, almost  _purposefully_  abstract, and his ire ranged from simple, bitter perturbation to a black hatred that burned so deep and dark within him Tony felt as though he may never fully wrap himself around it. 

     Regardless, Tony did try to measure all the same. There were things about his time with Loki which Tony felt positively _certain_  he could not fail to quantify. To start, it had been three times yet this evening that Loki had pressed into him, and then four… five, and Tony had counted, and would continue, thrust after thrust.

… _Yet_

     There came a time, at last, as there always did with Loki, when Tony could no longer quite recall the number he had gotten up to, or even the greater concept of numbers in general. Loki would tilt down to press scarred lips ‘ _Scarred? But how had he failed to…’_  into the dimple of skin beneath Tony’s collarbone, and the count would be abandoned completely in the immeasurable nature of what Loki was giving him, and that which he was taking, as well. 

     Tony could never realize the pride he had lost until he had fallen to his knees beneath the Liesmith, pleading. He could not faithfully observe the amount of peace Loki had given to him because, in truth, he could not recall the last time horrors had shaken him from sleep, and so he could not count the days he had rested soundly. 

     Thus, each night Loki would appear to watch the famous Iron  _Man_  come undone beneath him, and each day Tony would try to measure an immeasurable thing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I abhor math, and I hope you can’t tell. 
> 
> But oh, dear, I can’t write Tony to save my damn life. I fear he comes out all wrong in this, and far too soft and I’m quitting and going back to Loki bc this was an experience in frustration, I think. 
> 
> Thoughts/comments anything at all would be GREATLY appreciated! Don't be shy~


End file.
